Iran has signaled it is preparing for another war with the United States and has made public threats against the United States and its allies in a bid to prevent President Donald Trump from resuming the current conflict.
Over the past month, Iranian military commanders have stepped up a series of public messages insisting that Iran has a large stockpile of new weapons that it could launch at targets outside the region if the United States resumes hostilities that began in February.
Iranian officials have threatened to expand their targets if the conflict resumes, with options including cutting undersea internet cables, attacking AI data centers and attacking oil and gas facilities in the region.
Hossein Mohebi, a spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, said late last month that “the world will be surprised.” “There are new targets that have not yet been attacked,” he added.
Nearly nine months after the United States and Israel began their war against Iran, the conflict has reached a stalemate and everyone is worried about the final phase of the Trump administration and the world facing economic instability. Both sides claim victory, with Tehran pointing to its survival and Washington pointing to the damage inflicted on the Iranian regime. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to experiment with new economic and military measures to force Iran into surrender, which Tehran stubbornly resists.
“The war is not over,” Mohebi said. “The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is preparing for a long war.”
While Iranian commanders are demonstrating strength and readiness, ordinary Iranians, long beset by conflict and economic instability, are once again preparing for the realities of war.
“Every day and night, we wait for the bombing to start again,” a 70-year-old Tehran resident told CNN last week. “I charged all my power banks, stocked up on water, and made all the preparations because you never know when or if an attack will start again.”
The mother of two told CNN she lives in fear as she walks her children to school every morning, seeing the Revolutionary Guards and walking past streets where military bases remain active.
“I’d like to know exactly what else the United States is going to bomb?” she said. “They couldn’t even get rid of[Iran’s leadership]. They couldn’t negotiate. So what’s the point in starting a new war?”
Iranians are “convinced” that the war will resume, another Tehran resident told CNN.
“It’s all anyone can talk about… It’s just in the back of your mind, is it tonight? Tomorrow? I think it’s even worse that there’s so much conversation about it and you can’t even take a break,” the resident told CNN.
The Iranians spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity to speak freely about their fears of further war.
Over the past few weeks, White House advisers have been holding meetings to discuss various options against Iran. President Trump has publicly announced that he will not take any new action before the midterm elections, but multiple advisers have told CNN privately that they don’t know if that statement is definitive or if it could change before Election Day on Nov. 3.
The U.S. military is developing new attack plans, including the possibility of using the so-called “mother of all bombs” to target Iran’s energy infrastructure and nuclear facilities, if President Trump orders a return to combat operations around the time of the midterm elections, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The GBU-43/B Large Ordnance Air Explosive Bomb (MOAB) is the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal and would represent a significant escalation.
“These are propaganda tools aimed at intimidating the Iranian people,” Iranian military commander Alireza Sheikh said on Saturday. “The Iranian people are the father of all bombs.”
Iran has signaled a new, more aggressive military doctrine, even suggesting the possibility of launching a pre-emptive strike without waiting for an attack. Last week, the Revolutionary Guard’s social media accounts reported that Iran had conducted military exercises across the country, including firing 30 ballistic missiles at once.
Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, a think tank that focuses on U.S. foreign policy in the region, said that if an emboldened Iranian government decides to attempt an attack on Europe with new long-range missiles, targets could include U.S. forces based at air bases in Britain and a logistics hub in Ramstein, Germany, the largest U.S. military facility outside the United States.
“But Iran will probably hold that possibility to the highest level of escalation,” Nadimi said.
The United States returned all long-range bombers stationed in Britain to their home base earlier this month in response to an unspecified new threat, officials said. The move comes days after the British government arrested a number of people in connection with an alleged Iranian plot to target a Royal Air Force base where US bombers were stationed.
To improve its chances of hitting targets, Nadhimi said Iran could launch swarms of more sophisticated and coordinated AI-powered drones, equipped with cameras and data links, to communicate with each other and adjust their flight paths and speeds to evade jamming and air defenses.
“They have not yet demonstrated these capabilities, but we have discussed developing such technology in the past,” Nadimi said.
Iran may also seek to improve its cruise missile capabilities, including supersonic propulsion, to better evade interception and attempt to jam military communications and surveillance satellites, it added.
Ali Baez, deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, told CNN that Iranian commanders are preparing for a resumption of fighting that they see as inevitable, while also trying to deter Washington by highlighting the costs of an attack.
“Iran wants to make clear that the next round will take place on a wider battlefield, with less restraint and potentially more deadly consequences,” Baez said. “The danger, however, is that what Iran intends as deterrence could be interpreted in Washington as a provocation, increasing the likelihood of the very war Iran hopes to avoid.”
When the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran in February, they killed the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, along with Iranian military commanders, government officials, and civilians, including schoolchildren. Iran’s retaliation has focused primarily on its Arab neighbors, which it accuses of colluding with the US government.
Before attacking civilian infrastructure in Arab cities, Iran effectively closed off the Strait of Hormuz, the only sea route used by neighboring countries to export oil. Dubai, a major tourist destination, was targeted, a water supply facility in Kuwait was attacked, and attacks on data centers disrupted banking services in several countries in the region.
Iran has launched more than 2,500 missiles and drones in the United Arab Emirates alone, more than any other country, including Israel. According to statistics from the UAE Ministry of Defense, Abu Dhabi intercepted almost all the projectiles.
Last week, Mohsen Rezaei, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned that Iran would target U.S. assets in the region, including in the UAE, in retaliation for new attacks.
“If war breaks out again, numerous undersea cables, data centers, AI facilities and other infrastructure in the region could be destroyed,” Rezaei said.
A senior UAE official told reporters on Thursday that the country was well prepared if fighting resumed.
“We do not want war,” said Ali Al Nuaimi, chairman of the UAE Council of State’s Defense, Home Affairs and Foreign Affairs Committee. “But if war were to begin today, we would be better prepared than we were on February 28 to meet any threat that may come our way.”
“Whatever it takes to protect our national security, our sovereignty, and our people, we will do it.”
